86 of 89 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In Dreams I walk with you, September 16, 2003
Akira Kurosawa's dreams are better than mine. If this is what he saw when he closed his eyes, then I can understand how from that mind sprang the Seven Samurai and the rest.
"Dreams" is maybe the most personal, most "Japanese" of Kurosawa's films, and along with that it is perhaps the most difficult one for Western audiences to appreciate. This is saying nothing against Western audiences, but many of the themes and myths on display may not be familiar, and the imagery and metaphors may be lost without the appropriate background. I definitely appreciated it more after living in Japan, and becoming familiar with the countries folklore and literary story-telling style. Hina Dolls, the Yuki Onna, the mountain villiges like islands of tradition amongst concrete modern Japan...
"Dreams" is beautiful, on a purely visual level. The cinematography is exquisite and the colors and light are displayed with the eye of a painter. It is appropriate that Van Gogh plays a role in one of the many dreams. Like Van Gogh, the stories in "Dreams" are expressionistic and vivid, yet with the subdued emotions that is the hallmark of Japanese literature. This is not the wild, raw statement of a younger Kurosawa.
Story-wise, the dreams play with the themes of death and loss, both human and of nature. The displacement of Japanese forests, the lack of safety standards at nuclear power plants, the loss of traditional Japan, the pointless loss of lives in war...melancholy themes at best. Yet at the end, hope is offered, in a small nook and cranny, like a flower blooming amongst concrete.
The DVD itself is a small disappointment, and I would rather have this belong to the Criterion Collection, but better to have it than not have it.
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50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great film more people should watch, February 22, 2001
This film has in it some of the most beautiful cinematagrophy I have ever seen. If reviews where it is criticised as being slow or arrested worry you as to whether you should rent or buy it I would judge it like this: if the thought of walking through an art gallery and taking several minutes to sit or stand in front of some pictures to fully study and appreciate their beauty seems "slow" or "arrested" to you then you might not like it, if you can imagine yourself enjoying watching an expresionist/art noveau/surrealist set of pictures come to life on your tv screen then you might like it. I am dissapointed in those critics who can't imagine the medium of movies having value unless they are built around a fast paced linear plot line. These are the same people who probably think poetry is a bunch of rubbish and "Finnegan's Wake" is an unreadable waste of time. I hope and pray and fantasize that the studio that owns the rights to this movie will release it in greater numbers, drop the price, and (glory of all glorys) release it on dvd. It is one of the greatest movies of one of the greatest directors of all time and should be more accesible.
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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A trip through a genius' dreams, August 16, 2006
With an eight-stories sequence, Kurosawa expresses the magic of chilhood, the importance of perseverance and resistance, the beauty created by Van Gogh, war and atomic menace unleashed spreading their horror, and, last but maybe most important, hope an joy when the travel finishes. A film not to be seen once but many times, and getting amazed on each.
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